The Failure of the Conservative Party
by Effie Deans, The New Conservative:
The main purpose historically of the Conservative Party is to conserve. Rather like the RSPB is supposed to protect birds the Conservative Party is supposed to protect Britain. Protecting Britain involves defending our island against its enemies, which requires us to have a strong defence and a series of alliances with friendly nations. Britain now has a very weak defence. Our armed forces are tiny and relatively powerless compared to how they were historically. But perhaps more importantly protecting Britain means protecting our quality of life and preserving those aspects of living here that most of our citizens love. It is here too that the Conservative Party has failed to conserve.
Conservative voters want to live in pleasant towns and cities amongst other British people where politeness is the norm, crime rare and a decent standard of living is reasonably easy to obtain if you work hard at school and then go to work.
People are content with relatively little. A house, a family, enough food, a garden, a park nearby, the ability to drive to work cheaply, and go on holiday to the Mediterranean once a year.
If the Conservative Party could give British people up and down the country an economy that gradually improves, peace and prosperity and otherwise leave them alone it would continue to win most elections. But it hasn’t. It has failed in its mission to conserve.
The West is faced with three main external threats, Russia, China and radical Islam. We must contain these by spending sufficiently on defence and maintaining our technological advantage over opponents. But if America goes back to isolationism under Trump, Britain and indeed Europe in general would struggle to deter anyone.
But the threat from China and Russia is a limited threat because it is external. The threat from radical Islam is not merely that it is in Yemen, or Gaza or Iran. We can contain these threats because we can identify them. The real danger is that radical Islam is here and we cannot distinguish between the radical and the non-radical because the ideology is essentially the same.
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